Donald Trump

It’s Complicated…

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

Assuming you haven’t been living somewhere off the grid and blissfully disconnected from the world at large until this very moment, you’ve been hearing a lot of heavy-handed talk from certain sectors that anyone who doesn’t wholeheartedly embrace and endorse the Trump Administration is un-American. Those targeted with these rhetorical condemnations include Conservatives and several former Republican politicians who display what constitutes an unacceptable degree of disloyalty. It’s the mind-boggling perspective from these circles that, if someone isn’t fully on board with Donald Trump’s rather Autocratic and Authoritarian vision for America, they must hate America.

It’s readily apparent that this is in no way a condition tied to the office of President, but something exclusive to the person of Trump and those who curry his favor (only while they remain in his good graces). That much is evident in how these same people displayed open contempt toward Barack Obama and Joe Biden while they were in the White House. The same pervasive, inimical rhetoric wasn’t directed at the people who opposed Obama and Biden. The vehement opposition to those two Presidents was treated as part of the standard discourse in American politics, despite the acrimony and animosity being far more intense than anything that had previously been considered normal. This double standard indicates to me that there is a whole swath of the American population that believes that the spirit and character of America is somehow embodied within Donald Trump.

The implicit assertion, then, if taken at face value, is that these people believe opposition to Trump’s Administration is symptomatic of hating America (because Trump IS America).

I don’t believe this assertion is accurate, and not solely because it lacks nuance and reeks of little more than partisan jingoistic propaganda. Hating Donald Trump, his policies, and those who work to enact them is neither unpatriotic nor indicative of hating America. On the contrary, I would contest that it’s the people leveling these accusations who actually hate America, or at least the real America that exists outside of Donald Trump’s exceedingly narrow worldview. To defend that argument, I need to explore what it means to hate America. But first, there’s an important question to answer.

What is America?

Is America the land contained within the illusory boundaries we have in place? Is America the people residing in the United States, or (as some would surely insist) just the citizens of the nation? Is it the form of government established by the Constitution? Is it some ideal or another intangible thing beyond the scope of the Constitution, like what we refer to when talking of the American Dream? Is it all of these things, a combination of one or two, or some other thing entirely?

Additionally, we should probably establish what we mean when we say that someone hates America. Is it sufficient that they hate aspects of American culture or history? What about hating substantial portions of the American citizenry? What constitutes hate in this context? Before we can discuss whether one group or another hates America, it would be helpful to define all of our terms.

This, of course, exposes the complicated nature of the topic and further reveals the lack of nuance implicit in the accusations bandied about; that so many people hate America. Before we dig too deep, and speaking solely for myself, I have to say that, where my feelings toward America are concerned, it’s most certainly complicated. If America and I had a relationship status, that would be the simplest box to check: “It’s Complicated.”

Part of the reason for that complicated relationship in my case is that I am one of the millions of people directly descended from one of the 56 men who signed the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Benjamin Rush was a signatory from Pennsylvania, and his descendant, Rosanna Rush Merrill (a nurse during the Civil War), was my great-great-grandmother.

I learned of this family history at a young age. I spent time studying the physician who went from being one of the Sons of Liberty to a member of the Continental Congress, before becoming one of the illustrious men who inscribed his signature on the Founding Document of this nation. Despite the inherent Imperialism and Colonialism implicit in the foundation of America, I took no small amount of pride in knowing that I was directly descended from this man. This was especially true when I was young and ill-informed enough to perceive the country through rose-colored glasses.

I’ve said in the past that, if I had to pick a Founding Father to have descended from, I very well may have selected Benjamin Rush. Of the Founding Fathers I’ve studied, he’s the one who displayed what I consider the most admirable qualities. He was, first of all, an adamant and vocal abolitionist who fully opposed the slave trade and disagreed with any assertion that Black persons were in any way morally or intellectually inferior to Whites. Beyond that, he opposed Capital Punishment, founded both Dickinson College and the Young Ladies’ Academy of Philadelphia, believed in compassionate treatment of the mentally ill, and he believed addiction wasn’t a moral failing.

Sure, he had plenty of ass-backward thoughts on bloodletting and other things (even for the times). And yet, for the times in which he was living, he was nonetheless highly progressive, and I have to say it seems like he left behind more good than bad. It’s difficult not to feel a bit of pride in knowing I had an ancestor of no small esteem, who very well may have also seen the world the same way I do, were he alive today.

Another thing that complicates my relationship with America is that I come from a military family. It’s not just that my ancestor was directly involved in the Revolutionary War or that at least one of my great-great-grandfathers fought (on the correct side) in the Civil War. Both of my grandfathers served during World War II. Two of my three uncles served with the Army in Vietnam. My father was in the Navy, and my subsequent stepfather was in the Air Force. And now my oldest son is in the Army. In fact, had I not fractured five vertebrae a month before I turned 16, I would have enlisted as well.

I’m thoroughly opposed to our out-of-control Defense Spending, our rampant invasions of foreign nations over the last three quarters of a century, the lie we tell ourselves about bringing Freedom and Democracy to foreign lands, and the premise of American Exceptionalism that fuels our ongoing Imperialist and Colonialist activities. But three of the men I admired most in my life were soldiers, two of them involved in an entirely illegal and unjustified conflict. Nevertheless, they were heroes to me, and heroic men otherwise. I can’t simply disengage from that reality, no matter how much I oppose the conditions that led to these men being in the positions they were in, to become the heroes they became.

All of that aside, I’ve never been particularly patriotic, but I am proud of these aspects of my family history. To disentangle that history from the associated American history is virtually impossible.

But if I proceed from here, I’ll be getting ahead of myself, and I prefer to avoid that if at all possible. Let’s get back to definitions.

If, by America, we mean the land that we include within the boundaries, I find it difficult to believe that anyone opposing Donald Trump’s Administration could be accused of hating the wide-ranging landscapes and environments to be experienced from Maine to Hawaii and Florida to Alaska. There are, no doubt, certain ecosystems that people dislike. I’m not a fan of places that are particularly hot and humid, for example. But it’s not the people opposing President Trump who want to develop that land, mine it, or drill for oil. That’s not loving the environment or the land, that’s loving what you can take from it. That belies a superficial and selfish motivation, not an appreciation for the land itself. It’s a short-sighted, short-term predation that leaves nothing of value behind. Clearly, it is not the land that Trump supporters are accusing Liberals, Leftists, and anyone not loyal to Trump of hating.

So, is it the people? For simplicity, in this section, I’ll focus on Republican vs. Democrat, as those are the two largest voting blocs. As America’s population became more culturally and ethnically diverse, it’s definitely true that both major parties became less homogenized as a result; however, it’s been the Democratic Party that has displayed the greater degree of diversity in Representation, something that has shown a steady increase over time. At the same time, it’s Donald Trump who has maintained the unwavering support of White Supremacist Hate Groups, in large part because of policies that are transparently focused on benefitting a homogenized culture of straight, cisgender, white, Christian males. White people do make up the majority of the American population, at almost three times the number of people as are classified as Hispanic or Latino, more than four times as many as those who are classified as Black or African American, nearly nine times as many as those who are labeled as Asian, and more than 24 times as many people as those classified in any other way (including those who identify as two or more ethnicities). In fact, White people make up more of the population than all of those ethnic groups combined. So, could one argue that the party appealing to White Supremacists is the party that loves the larger number of Americans simply by virtue of skin color? I suppose one could make that argument, but that ignores the other characteristics that appeal to those same people: straight sexual orientation, cisgender identification, Christian faith, and male-dominated hierarchy. Of course, all of that becomes moot when we acknowledge that nothing suggests that not being a White Supremacist means that one hates White people. In fact, I would venture to guess that most of the animosity one perceives as being directed toward the Right is reactionary in nature. That hate arises as a result of the contempt and dehumanization that have long been directed toward the demographic groups constituting the Left. I’ve discussed it in the past, but I feel it merits repeating that there is a substantial difference between hating a group of people for who they are versus hating them for what they do. It seems apparent to me that it’s not the American people we’re talking about when it comes to hating America.

Is it the Democratic Republic established by the U.S. Constitution that Trump’s opponents are accused of hating? While the document certainly has its flaws, I’ve witnessed nothing from President Trump’s opponents that indicates widespread disdain for the Constitution. Both major political parties have been routinely accused of violating the Constitution, but only two Presidents in my lifetime have been impeached, and only one of them was impeached twice. And, in less than nine months in office, a total of 138 Executive Actions have been partially or fully blocked, and another 94 remain pending, with only 93 that were allowed to stand. At least ten of those decisions blocking Executive Actions were made by judges who were appointed by Trump himself. While it has largely been ignored, President Trump has clearly and brazenly violated the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses, breaking with tradition and not divesting himself of his assets and placing them in a blind trust to prevent conflicts of interest. Several State, Federal, and Foreign entities have paid incalculable amounts of money to Trump properties; however, a House Oversight Committee reported that President Trump accepted more than $7.8 Million from 20 Foreign Governments during his first term. To the contrary, Barack Obama requested guidance from the Department of Justice before accepting the Nobel Peace Prize due to the financial component. Of course, no other President has invited the 220 largest investors in a cryptocurrency (that business partners launched just before they took office) to a private dinner. Anyone pretending the Trump Administration isn’t a den of graft and corruption is either lying or wilfully ignorant. It could be argued that there’s hardly a Constitutional Amendment that Donald Trump hasn’t attempted to violate or redefine to suit his desires. To me, this means that his supporters either display a similar disrespect for the Constitution or a level of such ignorance concerning it that their stated appreciation of it would be rendered moot.

Could it be the idealistic American Dream that Trump and his supporters are accusing his opposition of hating so vehemently? Rooted in the Declaration of Independence’s statement that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable Rights, including Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, the American Dream has long been understood to mean that this is a place where anyone can achieve success and a better life through hard work and determination. I’ve seen no indication that people opposing President Trump are in any way opposed to the American Dream. But it can be clearly ascertained from Donald Trump’s actions that he struggles to redefine “all men” in such a way as to exclude all but those like him. He attacks immigrants (documented and undocumented alike), political opponents, the free press, women, the impoverished, the elderly, the infirm, and anyone who doesn’t subscribe to his revisionist view of the American Dream. Now that he’s openly admitted to adopting the playbook laid out in Project 2025 (though anyone who had read it previously was already aware of this), there’s a clear redefinition of core American Values at the heart of his platform. This is not the behavior of someone who loves the American Dream. These are the actions of someone who hopes to co-opt, manipulate, and convert it until it becomes a vehicle for his personal gain.

I don’t believe there’s any further need to define what is meant by hate in this discourse. It’s readily apparent that Trump and his supporters have no love, appreciation, or respect for the land beyond what they can consume from it. The people of America, unless they subscribe to a particularly rigid philosophy and meet an equally rigid set of physiological and psychological conditions, are not welcome in Trump’s vision of what America should be. The Constitution (and the Government bestowed by it) is an opportune shield when convenient and an obstacle to be shredded when not. The American Dream is perceived as something only an elite class (those who meet the previously discussed conditions) should have access to. This is flagrant disrespect for and contempt of everything we apply as a definition of what makes America, America. Who are these people to accuse anyone else of hating America?

I’ve heard it said that people who fight for equality and equity by pointing to past injustices and the ripple effects present today are guilty of hating America. Recognition of unpleasant and terrible elements within America’s past and present isn’t symptomatic of hatred for the country. Acceptance that we can and should be better is not a condemnation, but a guiding principle that was encoded within the Constitution itself. The purpose of Constitutional Amendments is to correct course where we were wrong or to adjust to changing times and conditions. Our Founding Fathers recognized that they couldn’t see the future and prepare the country for every eventuality, so they provided a method by which that lack of foresight could be accommodated. Condemning the systemic racism still present in all facets of American society isn’t hatred for White people, but a nudge and a reminder that there’s still work to do. We got started, for sure, but then (as a society) we got tired of exerting the effort because it wasn’t as easy as we hoped it would be, or because it was going to require serious structural changes that might inconvenience those of us who weren’t already being constantly inconvenienced by the existing structures. Hiding or erasing shameful truths from the past only serves to make it all that much easier to repeat the same mistakes. You can’t claim to love the country while wearing blinders and intentionally ignoring whole portions of what America is and was. We need to acknowledge the errors we’ve made and take responsibility to keep them from being repeated. We need to speak truth to the lies we’ve told ourselves regarding our place in the world and the lofty ideals we pretend to ascribe to as we impose our will on other nations, as well as the people of this one. We need to come to terms with our treatment of marginalized people of all kinds, here and abroad. That is what loving America looks like: helping her to become the nation we believed her to be when we were children, the nation our Founding Fathers believed she could become, and the nation that people from foreign lands seek to make their home. We can be better, and we should always be progressing ahead while keeping an eye on the past, so the lessons we’ve learned are never forgotten.

I don’t believe this perspective is exclusive to me. I think this outlook is perhaps more widespread, and that people are proud of certain elements of America or American History, while dissatisfied or even disgusted with others. That seems to me to be a reasonable perspective, because America is not just one thing, of course. If this is what someone defines as hating America, I’m afraid I don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.

Political Violence and the Selective Acknowledgment of It

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Political Violence comes in more shapes and sizes than Pokémon. And yet, it’s only ever a specific variety that most people seem willing to acknowledge, and then only when it suits the narrative they prefer to frame. When someone is killed in an act of direct Political Violence, hand-wringing, condemnation of physical violence, and proclamations that we are better than this inevitably follow closely behind. This is true, even (or especially) when the violence in question was a direct response to less overt forms of violence. You see, those more subtle forms of violent action are insidious in that people can easily dismiss them if they’re so inclined, but are often (if not always) more harmful.

Willhelm Frick, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Julius Streicher, and several others who were sentenced to death following the Nuremberg Trials had never killed anyone, and had (to the best of anyone’s knowledge) committed no acts of direct violence. In fact, Hermann Göring, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and Martin Bormann were among the minority, in that they had committed acts of direct violence and murder during their tenure within the Nazi Party. But, in 1946, we recognized that Political Violence comes in many forms, and the guilt of the 12 men who were sentenced to execution was not open to debate. Adolf Hitler, himself, has never been connected with evidence that he personally murdered anyone aside from possibly Eva Braun, before taking his own life. The same can be said for Joseph Goebbels, though he and his wife killed their six children and then themselves. These men, and many others, had been complicit and had knowingly issued propaganda and orders that led to the deaths of countless others.

Would anyone like to present the defense that these men were killed (or killed themselves to avoid being killed) because of their political opinions? Is that the extent of cultural relativism that we should be applying to the architects of the Holocaust? That’s what I keep hearing lately: that people shouldn’t be threatened, persecuted, or harmed over a difference of opinion. All I can assume is that many people need to better acquaint themselves with the definition of “opinion” before they start concerning themselves with differences between them.

Opinions are just assumptions or judgments that an individual develops regarding any particular topic. They can be informed or uninformed, but they’re little more than a subjective viewpoint with greater or lesser value depending on the expertise and the degree of authority invested in the individual sharing said opinions. Critiques of policy and ideology are political opinions. Whether they’re right or wrong, they’re opinions, and people are entitled to their own. Hate Speech, however, is not an expression of an opinion. Hate Speech is an attack, using dehumanizing and demeaning language to target an individual or a group of people based on features of their identity: Ethnicity, Nationality, Skin Color, Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, and so on. Hate Speech targets (often immutable) characteristics of the individual or group, for the purpose of expressing bigoted, biased, and prejudiced perspectives. Thus, we have the difference between those who condemn the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli Government, compared to those who condemn Jewish people or the people of Israel as a whole. One is a criticism of policy and the actions taken by a group, and the other is a condemnation of a group of people based on either Ethnicity or Nationality, depending on whether we’re talking about Jewish people or Israeli people. There is a massive difference between the two things, and yet we see colleges and universities losing funding because certain people want to conflate these two things with false equivalence.

Hate Speech is, in reality, a form of Political Violence that gets shrugged off as nothing more than a difference of opinion, typically by those who are not impacted by that violence. Hate Speech and hateful rhetoric paved the way for the Holocaust, along with the more recent Genocides in Rwanda, Myanmar, Bosnia, and Herzegovina.

Sheltering Hate Speech under an umbrella by treating it as if it’s nothing more than another legitimate opinion that one is entitled to share is just part of the weaponization of public discourse. It promotes discrimination and violence, especially when it’s combined with disinformation/misinformation campaigns designed to reinforce the bigotry involved.

Still, one might, of course, look at those guilty men I referenced above and argue that they were guilty of War Crimes. Therefore, the sentences were both just and appropriate. But, by the same standard, our current Administration should also face a tribunal.

Despite no evidence supporting the claims and the US Intelligence Apparatus contradicting them, the Trump Administration confidently states that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is linked to Tren de Aragua, and that a U.S. strike on a foreign boat in international waters was justified because that boat was carrying cocaine to our border (sans evidence). By any standards, the killing of foreign civilians in international waters is (by definition) a War Crime. The Trump Administration is hardly alone in this. Every President in my lifetime has been guilty of actions that should constitute War Crimes. Why are we not holding ourselves to a higher standard than we held the Nazis in 1946?

But, of course, it’s not just War Crimes that we’re dealing with today. The current Administration repeatedly flaunts International and American Law, violates the Constitution, and works to erode the mechanisms of Democracy within America. Men like the late Charlie Kirk have been instrumental in both endorsing and encouraging those actions, as well as being directly involved in helping to place Donald Trump in the position of authority he presently holds.

Charlie Kirk fostered an environment of White Christian Nationalism throughout his time in the public eye. It takes little effort to find several instances of outright Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Xenophobia, and myriad other forms of Bigotry in his Podcasts, Social Media posts, and Public Appearances.

He repeatedly expressed a baseless and racist endorsement of the Great Replacement conspiracy, wherein non-whites were coming to America (and other Western Nations) to replace whites. Just last month, he claimed, “The Great Replacement of white people is far more sinister than any redistricting project.” The Great Replacement theory is directly linked to several acts of Political Violence, targeting non-whites. More importantly, the Great Replacement is virtually identical to the White Genocide conspiracies that have been core aspects of neoNazi ideologies for a long time now.

Charlie Kirk accused Transgender people of being predators and actively encouraged his listeners/viewers to bully and harass them. Transgender people, while making up a tiny fraction of the population, are somehow substantially more likely to be victims of violence than cisgender people are.

He couldn’t even manage to consistently maintain his performative support for Israel and condemnation of antisemitism, despite knowing that he needed to tow that line because it might be a bridge too far for some of his audience. Nevertheless, he still managed to spout off tired old antisemitic talking points about Jewish people controlling everything from higher education to Hollywood, pointing the finger at Jewish financiers of “Cultural Marxism,” and acting aghast at Jewish people promoting anti-white hatred despite wanting white people to do away with that same kind of hatred against them.

To pretend that isn’t often Political Violence is tantamount to saying that violence perpetrated against Jewish people by German citizens in 1940s Europe was not Political Violence. When the apparatus of government endorses, however tacitly, the dehumanization of a group of people, it requires extensive mental gymnastics to pretend that the acts of violence perpetrated against that group of people are not acts of Political Violence. It also requires an impressive gymnastics routine to pretend that the propagandists who spread the dehumanizing message aren’t complicit in the outcomes.

Was it not Political Violence when Omar Mateen murdered 49 people and injured more than 50 others at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, FL? He may have claimed to support the Islamic State, but his motivations (even according to his father) were based on the same anti-LBGTQ+ sentiment we hear expressed by White Nationalists regularly. Since LGBTQ+ rights (and the existence of LGBTQ+ people) are treated like a political football, that would make any violence arising from homophobia and anti-Trans perspectives Political Violence. And this is State-Sanctioned violence, because Republicans certainly dedicate a lot of bandwidth to demonizing LGBTQ+ people, while Democrats often turn a blind eye to the violence perpetrated against them. And, whether Liberals want to accept it or not, neglect and dismissal are forms of Political Violence as well. But that’s a discussion for another time.

Men like Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro, Nick Fuentes, and even Donald Trump have a particular skill, even if they lack any others. They can extrapolate from their own insecurities, fears, and failures to develop a form of demagoguery that plays on those same weaknesses in an audience. This only works when the demagogue is in the majority, because for some people, there’s always an undercurrent of resentment and fear associated with imagining the loss of the power that comes with being the majority. Some of that, I’m sure, arises from the assumption that (if the roles are reversed) they will be treated as poorly as they have treated the minority group(s) within society.

Men like Kirk taste fear and weakness in their audience the way a shark tastes blood in the water, and they’re just as predatory about it. They stoke that fear with misinformation and cruelty, dehumanizing anyone who isn’t part of that majority group, and assuring the audience that they can rest assured of their superiority. They make them feel threatened by the outsiders, regardless of the fiction required to do so, because they know these people won’t risk eroding the false confidence they’ve built up by digging too deep or tugging at threads that could unravel everything.

And, as that manipulation leads to the inevitable results, they hide behind the shield of Free Speech, insisting that they’re just asking questions, voicing their opinions, or engaging in healthy debate. We’ve seen this happen several times in the past, with January 6th, 2021, as one of the most vivid examples. The architects of the direct Political Violence are smugly distancing themselves and feigning a sense of horror at what’s happening, as they assume no one will recall how openly they encouraged all of it.

One way or another, there needs to be consequences for the Political Violence perpetrated by those who conveniently, like cowards, hide behind a misapprehension of what “Opinion” means. And, just as important, people need to learn that calling for violence against one’s oppressors and those who have wished or encouraged violence against them is not at all the same thing as wishing harm on people just because they have a different opinion. Malcolm X wasn’t the same as the white racists who fought to maintain segregation and oppose the Civil Rights Act, because he called for reactionary violence. He was already the victim of Political Violence, and was only speaking the same language as those who perpetrated that violence. If you threaten someone or encourage others to act violently toward them by dehumanizing them and manipulating others into thinking they are a threat, you are not expressing an opinion. That isn’t merely a matter of differing political viewpoints.

Regarding the present situation, and the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s apparent assassination, we don’t even know if it was an act of Political Violence. It stands to reason that it probably is, but it’s just as likely to be someone who agreed with him on most accounts as it is to be someone who was politically opposed to his ideology, stripped of the Hate Speech and hateful rhetoric. After all, the same people storming the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, were the same people most vocally supportive of “Back the Blue” perspectives, yet they assaulted police officers without any compunction. When one promotes an atmosphere of hate and fear, in which violence is encouraged, we’re just as likely to see that violence turned upon people in the same group, the moment fractures appear. It’s worth keeping that in mind.

The Nazi Narratives Helping Conservatives Sleep At Night

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Conservatives sure do have a knack for claiming (accurate) accusations of Nazi parallels in their policies are hyperbolic while distorting historical facts to make (flimsy) accusations of Nazi comparisons with their opponents. What’s truly impressive is that they also do an excellent job of turning an aggressively blind eye to blatant Nazi corollaries.

The Weimar Republic, before 1933, was exceptionally progressive in many ways, even by today’s standards. Germany had been a global example of what we would consider LGBTQ+ inclusion. It was where, in the 1920s, the first Transgender magazine was published, and where some of the world’s first medical transitions were performed. These, and other factors, led to Berlin becoming a beacon for the global LGBTQ+ community.

All of that changed as Nazi control spread and ultimately dominated the political realm in Germany. Suddenly, Transgender women’s gender identities were denied, and they were treated as men acting out some perverse impulse or displaying some manner of mental illness. Additionally, homosexuality was treated as a crime, and the punishments were frequently more severe for those who engaged in what was categorized (at the time) as transvestitism.

While there were distinct differences in how Gay and Transgender people of persecuted ethnic/cultural groups were treated when compared to Gay and Transgender Aryans, there remained an overarching atmosphere of suppression and repression throughout the regions where the Nazis assumed control. Gay men and Transgender women were met with bigotry, intolerance, and hostility (regardless of Aryan status). But those who fit the narrow, White Nationalist aesthetic were often afforded certain leeway, as long as they kept their indiscretions quiet and hidden.

This, of course, did not mean that they were safe. There was ample State-Sanctioned hostility and violence directed toward those marginalized groups, and in particular, those who remained open about who they were by engaging in relationships or gathering in public. And, while Aryan Gays and Transgender people weren’t immediately sent to Concentration Camps, the imprisonment they experienced was far from humane, and the legal rights they were afforded often seemed more performative and conditional than legitimate.

The Nazi State’s assessment of Transgender individuals was neatly summed up in 1938 with the following sentiment: “Their asocial mindset, which is often paired with criminal activity, justifies draconian measures by the state.”

This was a massive departure from the previous German Government, which had allowed Transgender people to legally change their names, form their own organizations, and even receive gender-affirming medical treatments. Those changes came quickly. In 1933, Officials in Hamburg passed along the following dictate: “Police officials are requested to observe the transvestites, in particular, and as required to send them to concentration camps.”

Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science was quickly dismantled, and Hirschfeld himself was sent into hiding. And that was emblematic of those times for anyone who was part of what we recognize as being LGBTQ+ today. They were forced to hide who they were or face State-Sanctioned persecution.

Naturally, now that an ostensibly Transgender person perpetrated a school shooting, there’s talk at the highest levels of American Government of restricting access to firearms for individuals who don’t identify as the gender they were assigned at birth. Never mind that the vast majority of these crimes are committed by straight, white, cisgender males.

Of course, any time Democrats seriously propose firearm legislation (which never involves disarming gun owners), disingenuous Conservatives start claiming any efforts tangentially related to gun control are evidence that “The Left” is behaving like Nazis, who they insist had disarmed the German population before taking over. But as is true every time we hear Conservatives talking about the past, their arguments are ahistorical at best.

They’re right in saying that the Nazi Party implemented rigid gun control measures, but where they’re entirely incorrect is that the gun control was selective and that there were established regulations already in place.

Following WWI, the Weimar Republic had originally attempted to ban firearms altogether, in large part to comply with the Treaty of Versailles. But that legislation had been both massively unpopular and poorly enforced, and those restrictions had been relaxed by 1928, when permitting and registration took the place of the attempted ban.

But by 1935, the Nazis had largely succeeded in using those registration records in an effort to remove from (and restrict firearms for) Jewish people and members of opposing political parties. Of course, this only included the guns that had been registered, and there were many (purchased both before and since WWI) that had never been. Regardless of this, even if every citizen in Germany had been a proud gun owner, there would have been no chance of standing up against the might of the State by the time the Nazis seized control.

By 1938, the Nazi Party relaxed or outright removed firearms restrictions for Party Members, Government Workers, and those with Hunting Permits. Of course, all of those people had one thing in common, in that they were not the kinds of people the Nazis were targeting. In fact, they went so far as to outlaw the ownership of any weapons by Jewish people (and not just firearms). They were already systematically raiding the homes and businesses of Jews and Political Opponents, confiscating weapons from those people.

The Nazis utilized existing firearm registration records in Hungary, Poland, and France as a means of strategically confiscating guns from undesirables as they advanced into those nations as well.

It should perhaps come as no surprise that the Nazi Party wasn’t particularly fond of homeless people. Like Gay and Transgender individuals, homeless people were branded as “asocial,” and were afforded the same lack of liberty as others branded as such. The Nazi solution to homelessness went into effect almost immediately, and in 1933, the mass arrests started. This process was accelerated as the 1936 Berlin Olympics approached, because the Nazis wanted to present a clean facade for the visitors from other nations.

Soon enough, it wasn’t just homeless people, but anyone unemployed or begging, prostitutes, as well as drug addicts. Anyone deemed to be unsavory in the public eye was summarily rounded up. Persecution, sterilization, and one-way trips to Concentration Camps awaited anyone unfortunate enough to fall outside of the strict social norms imposed by the Nazi Party.

To maintain that social order, armed and uniformed political and military forces patrolled the streets wherever the Nazis were in control, not only in the territory taken through conflict, but in the cities of Germany as well. These police actions served to intimidate the population, suppress political opposition, and all but eradicate civil unrest of any kind. I suspect it’s unsurprising that Party Leadership was thrilled to proclaim the low crime rates they’d achieved.

It took until 1935 for the Nuremberg Laws to go into effect, at which point all Jewish and Roma people were stripped of their German citizenship. Before Kristallnacht, the Nazis focused on the forced deportation of Jewish people, but by 1941, those avenues of escape were officially blocked. The Roma people were classified as enemies of the State and treated as criminals as soon as the Nuremberg Laws went into effect.

If this doesn’t sound familiar to you, then you haven’t been paying attention. And if it sounds familiar, and you agree with any of it, maybe you should just accept that you might have been a Nazi as well. My recommendation is that you own it. Wear that title proudly, because they certainly did. Plus, as a bonus, it will make it easier to round you up when the next iteration of the Nuremberg Trials comes about.

You may notice that, aside from some pretty awful policies the Liberals have employed regarding homeless people, and the abhorrent treatment of Indigenous people, none of these things run parallel to any Liberal Administration within our lifetimes. I suppose it makes sense that members of the KKK and NeoNazi groups have been showing up at rallies for Conservative Candidates, because they’re not thrown out of those gatherings.

Where Does Our Federal Spending Go?

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I’m pretty well done with sifting through Federal Spending, Tax Revenue, and all that fun stuff, but I do have one more thing I’d like to share. Trust me, it will be fun (it’s full of numbers) and I’m trying to delve into how the Federal Government spends money. This seems particularly relevant when we’ve heard so much talk of how we need to cut Federal Spending (and where it should be cut) ever since Elon Musk and his team of grifters at DOGE got involved. Even as the net result of the 2025 Congressional Budget Bill is to increase Federal Spending while cutting down on Federal Revenue. It’s like Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan never left us, or they’re still with us in Spirit.

Personally, I think that means we need an Exorcism post haste.

This additional deep dive into Federal Revenue and Spending came about, partially in response to someone on Threads who insisted (despite all evidence to the contrary) that Donor States were still a drain on the Economy because many of them received more in Federal Funds than less populated States that couldn’t hope to contribute as much.

He clearly didn’t comprehend that words have agreed-upon meanings. No matter how much he wished it, he couldn’t arbitrarily change those definitions (not without some sort of consensus involved). It’s disingenuous at best to accuse Donor States of being a drain, when they are contributing more than they are taking. It really doesn’t matter that these states might be receiving more than others (that take more than they contribute). I continued that discussion far longer than I should have, when I simply needed to point out that he was wrong from the beginning, and wasn’t getting any less wrong the more he tried to argue his point.

That’s the problem with the way many people look at things today. They think that their sense of what is correct holds the same value as the reality of the thing, whatever that thing might be. Just because something doesn’t feel right, because it doesn’t correspond with one’s worldview, is not the same as something not being right or accurate. Some people (mostly men, it seems) think everything is up for debate and interpretation, but that simply isn’t how reality works. We don’t get to negotiate with reality the way we do with one another. One’s level of confidence in their being correct does not influence whether they are (even if it makes them seem like they must be), but there’s no convincing some people of that.

This is why, not so long ago, when more than a thousand people were polled, 12% of Men responded that they believed they could score a single point on Serena Williams in Tennis. Of course: 17% of Men also believed they could beat a Chimpanzee in a fight, 8% were confident they could defeat a Gorilla, and 6% suggested they could successfully fight a Bear. Keep in mind that these men are unarmed and the animals are neither infants nor infirm. So, there’s clearly no accounting for human stupidity, or the confidence that goes with it.

But, back to the topic at hand.

In 2023, the Donor States (those that paid out more in Federal Revenue than they received back) produced a combined surplus of $619 Billion. That was such a great surplus in Total Revenue that it offset the total amount consumed by states that received more than they paid out, with more than $105.1 Billion left to spare.

Fully 88% of that Federal Revenue came from Income and Individual Taxes (this includes Social Security and Medicare), with the remaining 10% coming from Business Taxes, Estate Taxes, and so on.

The Federal Government spent a grand total of just below $6.2 Trillion that year (which is more than the total Federal Revenue), which means Donor States provided roughly 10% of the total amount of Federal Spending in just the surplus between what they paid out vs. what they received back from that $6.2 Trillion.

It’s worth referring back to my earlier discussion of Sanctuary States to point out that 11 of the states classified as Sanctuary States, when broken down by Per Capita Revenue, generated more than they received that year. When looking solely at total amount of outgoing versus incoming Revenue at the State Level, it was seven Sanctuary States operating in the black. When we adjust our focus, in terms of total population, we’re looking at 11 Sanctuary States that paid in more than they cost the Federal Government per person. I keep bringing that up because it’s imperative to hammer in the point that people should stop trying to use Sanctuary States as a budgetary talking point as if they’re a drain on the economy. After all, the reality is quite the opposite.

It’s a simple thing to ignore context and simply accept that the Federal Government distributed a grand total of $4.56 Billion back to the various states and their residents. That’s still less than was obtained in Federal Revenue, by a little over $100 Billion. This isn’t entirely painting an accurate portrait, suggesting that the money actually went to the states. Defense Spending is included in this, which was disproportionately redistributed to wherever the largest military bases, contractors, and manufacturing facilities were located. Strangely enough, unlike the U.S. Postal Service, no one seems to expect the U.S. Armed Forces to turn over a profit, even though the U.S. Postal Service doesn’t receive direct Taxpayer funding.

So, to really dig into where Federal Spending is directed, we’re going to have to spend a little more time breaking things down. It doesn’t sound like much fun, but at least I’ll save you the time and effort of doing the math.

Only $2.4 Trillion of the total $6.2 Trillion in Federal Spending returned to the States for purposes of Medicaid, SNAP (Food Stamps), Social Security, Veterans Benefits, Transportation, and Education. That leaves $3.8 Trillion in spending left unaddressed. It’s worth noting that a large portion of the money spent through Medicaid, as well as some of what was spent on Veterans Benefits, went directly to Insurance Companies. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Federal Subsidies for Insurance Companies in 2023 totaled an estimated $1.8 Trillion (which included Medicaid, Medicare, CHIP, Affordable Care Act Marketplace Subsidies, and more). Referring to that as money that went to residents of the states in question seems disingenuous to me, but we’ll let it stand.

$658.8 Billion went toward payment of Interest on the National Debt (which totaled $34.7 Trillion as of last June), which is 17% of the previously unaccounted for $3.8 Trillion…leaving us with roughly $3.2 Trillion to track down.

Excluding Active Duty Military salaries, the Federal Government spent roughly $336 Billion on payroll for Federal Workers, which translates into approximately 10.5% of the remaining $3.2 Trillion, leaving $2.9 Trillion that we’ve not accounted for.

Foreign Aid seems to be a sticking point for several people lately, as they complain about how the money could (or should) be spent here at home. The reality is that Foreign Aid is a drop in the bucket. In 2023, Foreign Aid added up to a total of $71.9 Billion (which is less than the $74 Billion spent in 2022). I should note that this amount does not factor in sales of arms or transfers of military equipment; mostly because we typically sell materials and equipment without taking a loss. Even this exceptionally small number, compared to our total Federal Spending, turns out to be a grand total of 1.2% of that amount. Data from the United Nations indicates the U.S. still contributes 40% of all International Humanitarian Aid. That’s something we should be proud of. $14.4 Billion of that went to Ukraine in the form of direct monetary support, which (as I’m sure you notice) is not much at all when compared to total Federal Spending. It’s even appreciably less than the $15.6 Billion that went toward Foreign Disaster Relief and other Humanitarian purposes. Even though the current war in Gaza didn’t begin until October 7th of that year, we spent $3.3 Billion on Foreign Aid to Israel.

But, we still have essentially $2.9 Trillion to account for, so let’s keep going.

Defense Spending totaled $820.3 Billion that year. This amount shouldn’t be surprising, since we spent more than twice as much as the other 30 NATO Nations combined between 2014 and 2022. More than a quarter of that Spending went to the Air Force, and only slightly less went towards the Navy. Army and Marine Corps Spending combined to make up roughly another quarter of that total. This is where Active Duty Military salaries factor into the spending.

We now have just a little bit less than $2.1 Trillion to account for.

The $52 Billion we spent on Small Business Loans hardly makes a dent.

Of the $970 Billion in Discretionary Spending that wasn’t Defense-Related, only a portion of it hasn’t already been accounted for in the previous Spending that went back to the individual States. $83 Billion of that was spent on International Affairs, $74 Billion went toward Administration of Justice, $48 Billion to Natural Resources and Environmental Spending, while $40 Billion was dedicated to Science, Space, and Technology. Adding those totals to what was spent on Small Business Loans, we’re only looking at $1.9 Trillion left to go.

Only $31 Billion went toward Pell Grants for the roughly 6.5 Million college students who received them that year, so that hardly registers.

And unfortunately, it only gets more challenging to trace the money at that point.

Tax Refunds for Earned Income Credits, the Federal portion of Unemployment Compensation, and other dispersals factor into the same Mandatory Spending category as SNAP funding, which totals $448 Billion. But some of that has already been accounted for in the money we discussed being distributed to the States. Unfortunately, it’s exceedingly difficult to sift through itemized spending to discern just how much we’ve already considered in our breakdown of Federal Spending.

There’s also $502 Billion that was distributed between Federal Civilian and Military Retirement Benefits, some additional Veterans’ Benefits, and offsetting costs for other previously discussed areas of Mandatory Spending such as Social Security and Medicaid. But, again, a significant portion of that Spending has already been mentioned.

Even if that was all above and beyond what had been previously accounted for, we would still have more than $900 Billion to account for, which is no small amount. And, if I’m being entirely honest, I don’t know how much more we’ve ticked away at the $1.9 Trillion we were looking at before those areas of Mandatory Spending entered the discussion. For the sake of moving this forward, we’ll go ahead and operate under the assumption that we’re looking at $900 Billion to account for.

Some of that was further distributed to States via Nonprofit Programs and Organizations that received grants. Of course, most of the funding for U.S. Nonprofits comes from sources other than the Federal Government. They received more than $550 Billion in Charitable Giving, with $101 Billion of that coming from Charitable Foundations and an estimated $412 Billion or so coming from Individual Donations or Estates. The rest more than likely came from Businesses and Corporations. Naturally, there are tax breaks involved for those entities.

I’d love to imagine our Federal Government shelling out $550 Billion or so toward Nonprofit Organizations and matching those numbers, but that’s a fantasy. The most liberal estimates indicate the Federal Government, in some capacity, spends an average of roughly $303 Billion on U.S. Nonprofits annually. But it’s difficult to find a breakdown of that Spending specifically for 2023. It probably varies significantly by year, so we’ll focus on the $303 Billion as a total, and assume none of it was already tallied in earlier categories.

This leaves us with (we’ll say) $600 Billion that I simply don’t have the Resources or the Time to track down. The best I can do from here is offer some speculation, and suggest aspects of the Federal Budget that weren’t entirely accounted for previously.

I’m sure that some of it falls through the cracks as Black Budget Items and Surveillance or Espionage Spending that doesn’t get mixed in with the usual Defense Spending, to keep it off the books. But I don’t imagine those Budgetary elements come anywhere close to $600 Billion, when the on-the-books Defense Spending is already more than $800 Billion.

We could assume some of it is Government Contract Spending that isn’t accounted for in the Defense Spending totals, Small Business Grants, and the other Funding already considered. Elon Musk’s various companies were recipients of $3 Billion of that Contract Spending, split between several different Federal Agencies, but most of that has already been accounted for.

Government Contracts devoured $759 Billion in Government Spending for 2023. $470 Billion of that was through the Department of Defense. Assuming the rest (which is surely not accurate) has not been part of the earlier Spending we’ve discussed, that would leave $289 Billion.

We would still be looking at more than $300 Billion left at the Table, which is clearly not the case, because our Deficit wouldn’t be as high as it is. The reality is that there’s definitely upwards of $300 Billion that I haven’t accounted for in my research, and that’s certainly no small amount.

Even with that ultimate failure in my capacity to dig through every Bill and piece of Legislation that slipped through Congress in 2023 (or before, because some of them include spending allotments for years to come, which is why we had the recent Recision Bill that took back funds that had previously been approved by Congress), I hope this has helped to explain where Federal Spending is directed. Sadly, I doubt the people who most need to get a firm grasp on what we’re spending (and where) are the least likely to take the time necessary to read this.

Immigrants Aren’t Stealing Your Social Security…But You Are Stealing From Them

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It’s disturbing that, in the context of discussions regarding Immigration in the U.S., there’s clearly no point in trying to appeal to the humanity, empathy, and compassion of the people who are buying “Alligator Alcatraz” merchandise or cheering on ICE Agents who are breaking the car windows of fathers dropping their children off for school because they refuse to comply with an order to turn themselves in (I mention that because it specifically happened in Portland just a short while ago). It’s a bit of a stretch, but I can hope that breaking everything down to a purely financial consideration will resonate with a small number of those people, though I’m not sure it paints a flattering portrait of them that money speaks louder than morality.

It just so happens that I have an admittedly numbers-heavy argument in opposition to our increasingly draconian Immigration Policy. It happens to correspond with another topic that’s important to me, the failure of our Social Security Program. It dovetails nicely with the conversation surrounding Undocumented Immigrants. I’d like to say this is the last of my long, mind-numbingly tedious, math-intensive arguments, but I would be lying. All I can hope for is that people are learning something from the information I’m taking the time to share.

According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, as of last November, 77% of all Immigrants in America have Documented (Legal) Status of some kind. Naturally, that means only 23% of the Immigrants here would be what people commonly refer to as being “Illegal.”

A 2023 Congressional Report detailed that a total of 365,714 Noncitizens received Social Security in 2021. This constituted only 4.8% of the total recipients of SSI Payments. More than 76% of the Noncitizen recipients were 65 or older, and more than 60% of them were female.

Historically, the largest number of noncitizen recipients of SSI Payments was in 1995, the year before the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act was passed. That number was 785,000 people, just slightly more than twice as many as were receiving SSI Payments in 2021.

Exhaustive studies performed by the Social Security Administration have displayed that increased Immigration leads to a decrease in the Social Security Fund Deficit. The inverse, of course, is also true, that decreased Immigration further increases that Deficit. This means that more Immigrants coming to America means there is more money going into the Social Security Fund.

As Ron Popeil would say, “But wait, there’s more!”

According to an Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy analysis, Undocumented Immigrants (those commonly referred to as Illegal) paid an estimated $25.7 Billion into the Social Security Fund in 2022, despite the vast majority of those individuals never obtaining an Immigration Status that would allow them to receive SSI Benefits. To put that in numbers that are easier to digest, it means that more than $2,300 was paid into Social Security for each of the 11 Million Undocumented Immigrants living in America, while only a small percentage of those Immigrants will ever be able to collect on what’s been paid in. We’ll set aside discussions of the immorality and predatory nature of that disparity for now, because that’s a whole different conversation.

This one-way exchange is not new, as actuaries performed a study in 2013 that showed Undocumented Immigrants were responsible for $12 Billion paid into the Social Security Trust in 2010. Some of this, of course, arises from the use of false or stolen Social Security Numbers by Undocumented Workers to obtain employment, which is (as we know) a crime. But how many of us would commit a crime just to work and pay taxes? Most of them are not criminals, though, as it’s estimated that at least half of all Undocumented Immigrant households utilize an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number to file taxes.

Assuming a plateau with no further upward trend since the numbers for 2022 were assessed (as unrealistic as that might be), if we remove all Undocumented Immigrants from America, we will be losing $25.7 Billion every year that would otherwise be paid into the Social Security Trust. This means that it’s likely to lose solvency earlier than the updated 2032 estimate. And that is just from Undocumented Immigrants. Documented (Legal) Immigrants contribute substantially more, but some of them are also eligible to benefit from the program.

Thus, the Trump Administration’s plan to not only remove Undocumented Immigrants, but also strip Documented Immigrants of their legal status to Deport them, is going to cut down on the amount of money going into our Social Security Fund, while only marginally impacting what is paid out.

And, despite what certain people seem to believe, the administration won’t make up that lost revenue by discovering fraud. Despite the literal bullshitting done by Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and all the parrots who couldn’t stop themselves from repeating their claims, there has been no evidence of widespread fraud in the Social Security Administration. In fact, the program has a 99.7% Payment Accuracy Rate. The 0.3% consists not of fraud, but mostly of incorrect payment amounts due to errors or delays in payment. Also, despite the fraudulent nonsense I had to hear from Musk and the people who couldn’t think for themselves if their lives depended on it, only 0.1% of payments go to people 100 and older. This is–as you can probably tell–statistically accurate.

Of course, it’s not just Social Security that’s being financially stripped by these counterproductive policies.

Undocumented Immigrants have contributed close to $100 Billion in Federal, State, and Local Tax Revenue, often paying at higher rates than the Top 1%. Studies have shown that providing Work Authorization to all Undocumented Immigrants would add $40.2 Billion in Tax Revenue. If you care about the conditions for Immigrants living in America, this is what you should be endorsing. Otherwise, hundreds of thousands of people are paying in more than their fair share, while being ineligible to reap the benefits…much the same as it is with Social Security.

Unlike Elon Musk’s fictional claims of Social Security Fraud, none of this is about how I “feel” or some “vibe” I have. Contrary to the talking heads and pundits on Fox News, OAN, and Newsmax, I’m taking the time to read the reports and studies on the topic. What I’m sharing here are facts reinforced by studies, research, and years of data. These aren’t opinions. There aren’t two equal sides to this discussion, and it’s not ambiguous or open to debate.

In the simplest terms, and phrased in a way I trust the intended audience would understand, “The facts don’t give a fuck about your feelings.”

How Income Taxes Work…and Why The Big Beautiful Bill Isn’t So Beautiful

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It stands to reason that I’m no fan of the Congressional Budget Bill that was recently signed into law. There’s a lot to hate about the contents of that legislation, and I’ve touched on some of those things previously. But it’s worth taking a moment to look at the “good” portions of what we’ve all heard referred to as the “Big Beautiful Bill” as well. This is, after all, the bill that everyone is so proud of and so certain you should be proud of too.

Before I get to all of that, unfortunately, I’m going to have to spend some time on a bit of a tangent. This will be long, tedious, and number-heavy, but I will do my best to make it at least marginally interesting too. It could be beneficial for everyone to read it. It seems like many people don’t understand the basics of how taxes work, so I also want to take some time to delve into that, while discussing how we are shortchanging Social Security and our Federal Revenue by catering to the wealthiest people in America. To do that, a discussion of how Taxes work is sort of imperative.

The 2017 Tax Cuts were set to expire this year, but are now permanent. However, I’m not sure how many people actually comprehend how tax rates are applied or how the brackets work, so it might be worthwhile to dedicate some time to explaining that.

For an individual (I’m not doing this for all statuses, you can do that shit yourself):

We’re going to make this simple; we’re going to pretend you earn $1 Million a year. Yes, I understand that less than 0.5% of Households fall into that category. In America, fewer than one million Households earn at least $1 Million in annual income. Congratulations on becoming part of the Top 1%, you magnificent bastard.

For the first $11,600 you earn, you owe 10% of that in Federal Taxes, which is $1,160. The math on that little bit is simple, just remove a 0 from the end.

For every dollar you earn between that amount and $47,150, you owe 12% in Federal Taxes. This comes out to $4,266. So, if your income were exactly $47,150 per year, you would only owe $5,426 in total. But that’s not you. You’re earning a whole hell of a lot more than that now.

For every dollar between $47,150 and $100,525, you are paying 22% in Federal Taxes, which translates into an additional $11,742.50.

The next bracket takes you all the way up to an income of $191,950. At that point, you are paying 24%, or another $21,942. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll see that our current Tax Burden is sitting at $39,110.50.

From $191,950 to $243,725, we are looking at a rate of 32% paid out to the Federal Government. That adds another $16,568 to your tax bill.

The next bracket is in effect up to $609,350, at a rate of 35%. That tacks on an additional $127,968.75. Your total Tax Burden is now sitting at $183,647.25. I know, that seems like an awful lot. But, come on, you’d be earning more than $600,000, giving up less than a third of that doesn’t seem so bad. Don’t be so greedy.

For every dollar above that, regardless of how much more you earn, we’re looking at a static rate of 37%. So, for the rest of your $1 Million income, it’s only another $144,540.50. See, that really isn’t so bad.

So, on your brand new $1 Million salary, you’d owe the IRS a grand total of $328,187.75 for the year, leaving you with $671,812.25 of your income.

Of course, there’s also Social Security Tax, which is currently 6.2% on everything up to $176,100. If that seems unreasonably low to you, next year the cap will be higher, because it adjusts annually according to the average wage index.

We’re going to stop here for a moment. Consider it the equivalent of a Scenic Overlook on a road trip. Much like a Scenic Overlook, you can take this as an opportunity to relieve your bladder. If you’d like to know one major reason Social Security is going to be depleted by 2032, we just skirted past it. One primary cause is that you (with your $1 Million annual salary) are not paying into Social Security on $823.900 of your earnings. That would have been $51,081.80 that could be contributed in addition to the $10,918.20 you’re paying in. The math on that one is easy, too, because it’s another example of simply removing a 0 or two. Instead of paying $62,000 into the Social Security fund, you only paid $10,918.20. If your salary were $5 Million, you avoided paying $299,081.80. That hardly seems reasonable, does it?

As we discussed (you lucky bastard), fewer than 0.5% of American households had an annual income of more than $1 Million in 2022, according to the World Economic Forum. Somewhere in the vicinity of 400,000 to 500,000 people earn $1 Million or more a year. Assuming they were all capped at exactly $1 Million, and there were 400,000 of them, that would be $20.4 Billion not being collected for Social Security every year because of that cutoff at $176,100. This has been a problem since the 1980s, because earnings for upper-income levels have risen substantially faster than those of the rest of the population.

Despite President Trump’s assurances that the Congressional Budget Bill would remove taxes on Social Security, that is not what happened. Instead, what we received was a temporary Deduction that applies to all income for people 65 and over, though it does include Social Security income.

The final version passed by the Senate makes this a $6,000 Deduction for individuals with adjusted gross income of up to $75,000 annually, or $150,000 for couples filing together.

The deduction will expire after four years and does not apply to all recipients, including those who claim Social Security benefits before they turn 65. So, unless you’re over the age of 61, you won’t be benefiting from this temporary deduction.

This is where we locate yet another major driver behind the failure of our Social Security program. Some estimates suggest this will accelerate the depletion of Social Security by two years, pushing the date up to 2032. All while increasing the federal debt by 7% over the next 30 years. So, suppose you’re under 58 years old as you’re reading this. In that case, you can dispel any assumption that you’ll be able to benefit from the tax-free Social Security (or Social Security at all) when you do turn 65, because the Social Security Trust will more than likely be empty, no matter how much you personally paid into it throughout your employment history. I’ll come back to the depletion of Social Security after I finish going over how your taxes work and take some time to touch on the other “good” things found in the Congressional Budget Bill.

Moving on, there’s the Medicare Tax of 1.45% up to $200,000, and 2.35% on every dollar beyond that, so you’re paying $21,700 into Medicare for the year.

Deductions then factor in, and the odds are that your effective tax burden will be substantially decreased.

First, there are Above-The-Line deductions. These are subtracted from that $1 Million you earned for the year before anything else factors in, decreasing your Tax Burden by formulating your Adjusted Gross Income.

If you paid toward Student Loans, used a Health Savings Account, contributed to a traditional IRA, or any of several other things that contribute to your overall deductions, that’s something you can figure out on your own. Those things are deducted before the Standard Deduction.

The Senate version of the Congressional Budget Bill allows people to deduct income paid as tips (in careers where tips are customary). This amount is capped at a maximum of $25,000. I’m not sure how common it is for someone to earn more than $25,000 in tips over a year, but since most tipped workers are at or below the Federal Poverty Level, it seems unlikely that there are many. This is only in effect through 2028.

The Senate proposal limits that deduction on Overtime Pay to $12,500 per individual. This is also temporary, expiring after 2028.

So, those are some of the “positive” things we can look forward to.

The Standard Deduction was previously $15,000 for an individual or $30,000 for a married couple filing jointly. Once the changes took effect, the Standard Deduction increased to $15,750 and $31,500, respectively.

The new Standard Deduction of $15,750 is a given, but anything else beyond that is specific to the individual. Assuming none of the Above-The-Line deductions apply to you, what that means is that you will only be taxed as if you earned $984,250 instead of $1 Million, which would knock $5,817.50 off of your tax bill. That doesn’t seem like much, but it’s not nothing. Of course, if you have to itemize your deductions, the change in the Standard Deduction is irrelevant.

Non-itemizing filers can now claim $1,000 in charitable giving per year, and couples can claim $2,000 for deductions.

The Senate’s version of the Child Tax Credit, while slightly lower, is permanent. So, instead of a deduction of $2,500 per child, it’s $2,200, but at least it doesn’t expire in 2028 as some of the Above-The-Line deductions will.

The State and Local Tax Deduction will increase from $10,000 to $40,000, and increase by an additional 1% every year until 2030, when it will revert to $10,000. I don’t know if you live in a state where you pay State Income Tax, but chances are good that you do. That percentage is extremely variable, depending on where you live (which you know if you read what I wrote regarding Single-Payer Healthcare), so I won’t bother calculating it. I live in a state without it, but work in a state where there is State Income Tax, so this is beneficial to me.

The changes to the Estate and Gift Tax will benefit almost no one.

It increases from an exemption of $13.99 Million to $15 Million for individuals and $27.98 Million to $30 Million for couples who file jointly. I say this will benefit almost no one because the minimum net worth to be part of the wealthiest 1% is $13.7 Million as of this January, according to Investopedia. So, less than 1% of the population has the potential to leave an Estate or Gift of $15 Million.

Now, the trouble is that the people who could benefit from that increased exemption are the ones who really don’t fucking need it.

Individuals like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, and other multi-billionaires avoid paying Income Taxes in several ways. Elon Musk receives no salary from Tesla, but was approved for a ten-year pay plan from the company last year that had a value of $44.9 Billion. The trick is that it was all in stocks, which means he won’t be paying any Federal Income Tax on that, while he can still use the stock value as collateral for loans, credit, and the like.

Mark Zuckerberg received an annual income of $1 last year, but received compensation amounting to $27.2 Million, which included $14 Million to cover his security and an estimated $1 Million in private jet travel. The rest, as you would imagine, came in the form of stocks.

Peter Thiel’s income is not publicly available. That’s something you might find amusing, considering what Palantir is capable of. Despite not knowing his annual income, we do know he has invested more than $5 Billion in Roth IRAs, which cannot be taxed, assuming he waits until retirement to liquidate them.

Jeff Bezos typically received a salary of $81,840, with total compensation that added up to $1.68 Million in 2022. Because of how he earns most of his money, via stock options, it was estimated he earned $8 Million every hour of the year between 2023 and 2024. And yet, there are several years in which he paid no Federal Income Tax, and has maintained an effective Tax Rate of 0.98% compared to his accumulation of wealth.

If you’re noticing a trend, you’re at least moderately observant. These people at the top of the American financial ladder are not even coming close to contributing their fair share in taxes. In part, because we don’t tax Unrealized Gains, which means all the stock options contribute to their Net Wealth and allow these people to live as they do, but are never taxed until they sell shares, and then Capital Gains Tax comes into play.

If something doesn’t seem wrong about that, you’re not paying attention.

There are years when the wealthiest people in the world are literally paying less in taxes than the people below the poverty level, and not just by percentage, but by dollar value.

Putting an end to that should be a priority. All it would take is implementing an Unrealized Gains Tax above a certain dollar value, maybe a 50% Tax on anything above $15 Million (just like the Estate and Gift Tax). Hell, Kamala Harris was far more generous, proposing a 25% tax on Unrealized Gains for anything over $100 Million. People freaked out over that because they had no idea what they were talking about, and because they were fed misinformation and fear-mongering that led them to believe their home’s increasing sales value would further increase their taxes. In reality, her proposal would have impacted fewer than 11,000 people nationally, and if you’re reading this, you’re probably not one of them. You probably don’t even know any of them, at least personally. That’s the kind of Tax Reform we need from something that anyone would consider worthy of calling a Big Beautiful Bill.

Now, I promised I’d get back to this, and I like to keep my promises. There’s one more massive driver behind the imminent failure of our Social Security program. It’s time to finish the discussion of why Social Security is likely to be bankrupt in only seven short years. We can thank Ronald Reagan and his Social Security Amendments of 1983 for that lovely little “fuck you,” with powerful assists from Alan Greenspan and a complicit and lazy 98th U.S. Congress.

Unfortunately, Trickle-Down (Supply Side) Economics was working out precisely as anyone but a moron would expect it to, and the decreased tax rates (for the highest income earners) were generating far less revenue than was promised. Our economy was in pretty big fucking trouble, because nothing but the delusional fantasies of our President happened to be trickling down. Reagan convinced a large number of people that Social Security was on the verge of bankruptcy, even though it wasn’t. But he had a solution. It was a two-pronged approach that would save everyone.

Surplus Social Security revenue generated by a Payroll Tax Hike implemented under Reagan, to the tune of roughly $2.7 Trillion, was meant to be invested in U.S. Treasury Bonds and held in trust until approximately 2010. That was it. That was his brilliant solution. It might have actually paid off, but Ronald Reagan was (predictably) Ronald Reagan.

Of course, Reagan, being the piece of shit he was, the surplus revenue raised by the payroll tax hike went into the General Fund instead of U.S. Treasury Bonds. Reagan then proceeded to spend every dime of that surplus that appeared during his remaining time in the White House. George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush followed suit and treated it like a fucking slush fund as well. Instead of putting $2.7 Trillion into trust, the money was spent on wars, covering the deficit from additional tax cuts for the wealthy, and shoring up other areas of the government.

Maybe this would have worked out if Social Security hadn’t stopped generating surplus revenue back in 2009, but it did. In 2010, it ran at a loss for the first time since 1983, by more than $40 Billion. This was money we borrowed from China. And we’ve had to borrow money from somewhere every year since then.

Well, we all sort of see where it goes from there. What’s worth noting is that, assuming we’d just kept the $2.7 Trillion where it belonged, and our Social Security shortage was by roughly $50 Billion every year, it could still be solvent through 2064, or 32 additional years from what is now projected.

America’s Healthcare System Is Terrible…But That’s Okay…It’s Getting Worse

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The Healthcare System in this country is so totally broken. And it never ceases to amaze me that so many people either fail to see that or simply don’t care. I can only assume that the bulk of those individuals have never known or loved someone with a chronic illness or a disability of some kind, or–god forbid–something atypical in their biology.

They’ve never listened to the tearful conversations with doctors who regretfully share the news that the procedure or medication they recommended on the patient’s behalf has been declined by someone who is paid by the Insurance Company to locate any possible errors in Medical Coding, Coverage Limits, or what their Tables indicate as Appropriate Treatments.

I assume that they’ve never watched someone they care about waiting months as they jump through one hoop after another, as the actual Medical Practitioners dot every “i” and cross every “t”, per the wishes of an Insurance Provider who is just as likely to Deny the recommended treatment after all is said and done.

Surely, they’ve never watched someone give up, too exhausted to keep fighting Denial after Denial, of something several Medical Professionals have confirmed they need or that would improve their Quality of Life

After all, how could anyone who has witnessed or experienced things like that be of the mind that our Healthcare System isn’t bad enough as it stands, and needs to be made worse? That’s precisely what the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans have opted for. As it turns out, they didn’t need to do anything at all, because things were on the way to getting worse without any assistance.

Not only are we looking at huge numbers of people removed from Medicaid and Medicare, combined with rising costs for Health Insurance obtained through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace, thanks to the new Congressional Budget Bill…but, according to a new study, more than half of American Employers are planning to pass rising costs of Health Insurance on to Employees.

Even if you’re lucky enough not to see a bigger bite taken from your paycheck, you might be one of the fortunate many who can expect to see higher Deductibles and/or Out-of-Pocket Maximums. Of course, there’s no guarantee you won’t see those increased costs even if you’re also experiencing higher Premiums.

Apparently, this is because the Employer-Paid portion of Health Insurance is expected to increase by 6% next year, after a 4.5% increase last year. Naturally, the Employee is the one who should shoulder that cost.

And the Insurance Companies are blaming it on increased Healthcare Costs (ignoring the rampaging elephant in the room, that the existence of Insurance Companies is a major driver behind those increased costs). Of course, they’re also pointing the finger at the popularity of expensive GLP-1 medications used for weight loss. Naturally, as should surprise literally no one, fewer Insurance Companies will be covering GLP-1 drugs next year. And, to maintain their year-over-year Profit Margins, they’re likely to stop covering a lot of things people have come to expect and depend on. So, as we should have learned from “Shrinkflation” in virtually every other industry, we look forward to paying more for less.

And all of this comes about as a new report indicates one in three Americans live in a “Healthcare Desert” where people lack access to vital services such as Pharmacies, Trauma Care, and Primary Care Physicians.

That’s not altogether shocking. After all, roughly 150 rural hospitals have closed their doors in the last 20 years…and the odds are good that more will be following suit. It’s still horrible to imagine that an estimated 28 Million Americans live more than 30 minutes from the nearest hospital, and that about 50 Million live more than an hour from a Trauma Center. This is only going to get worse as a byproduct of the Congressional Budget Bill, because $10 Billion a year (to be distributed between all 50 States) for rural hospitals isn’t going to go half as far as GOP Senators think…or at least not as far as they suspect their supporters are stupid enough to believe it will. I opted to amend that because I’m sure the Senators knew exactly what they were doing, and they simply didn’t care.

As the cost of Healthcare goes up, the ability to access it is going down.

I’d sincerely like to hear someone answer the same question proponents of Single-Payer Healthcare are always being badgered with.

“How can we afford this?”

The Truth About Medicaid, Medicare, & Other Fraud: It’s Not What You Think

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It has always seemed obvious to me that if people want to know where Medicare and Medicaid Fraud come from, they need to stop looking for illegal recipients. It isn’t as simple as some might think to defraud programs like SNAP, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid by filling out an application with false information.

I don’t know why it bears mentioning, but neither Medicaid nor Medicare provides Beneficiaries with cash. They operate as a substitute for Health Insurance. That might come as a surprise for those of you who have never needed to use one of these programs. So, even if someone successfully applies via Fraud, they aren’t lining their pockets at the expense of Taxpayers.

Even if someone manages to obtain Medicare or Medicaid coverage through fraudulent means, what happens then? In the worst-case scenario, they would obtain medical treatment that they otherwise could not have received. Let’s assume it’s the most expensive surgical procedure from 2024, which is a Heart Transplant. At the most expensive rate, that would cost Medicare or Medicaid $1.3 Million, assuming it would cover the surgery in the first place. It would require more than 38,000 people receiving fraudulently obtained Heart Transplants to equal the $50 Billion House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed was lost to Fraud, Waste, and Abuse of Medicaid each year. If that seems absurd to you, you’re absolutely correct.

Just last week, CVS Health’s Omnicare (pharmacy services for long-term care & senior living communities) was found guilty of fraudulently billing the U.S. Government for invalid Medicare, Medicaid, and Tricare Prescriptions and ordered to pay $948.8 Million in penalties & damages. A massive $406.8 Million of that was for Damages, which were tripled as per the False Claims Act.

All of this came about because a Whistleblower brought attention to more than three million false claims between 2010 and 2018.

In 2021, the average Medicare Spending per Beneficiary was only a little over $15,000. To put that in perspective, it means the Fraud committed by CVS translated into the equivalent of the total annual spending for just under 9,000 Beneficiaries, or just under 1,000 Beneficiaries each year for which CVS was found Guilty of the illegal billing.

And this is just the Fraud from one Corporation. I can assure you that they are not alone.

One thing that people need to understand is that Improper Medicaid payments are not the same as Fraud. It’s a challenge for some people to wrap their heads around that distinction because certain individuals have played fast and loose with conflating the two things…because it suits their agenda.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Improper Payments made up only 5.09% of the total payments made by Medicaid in 2024. Of that 5.09%, roughly 80% (or 4.07% of the Total) were caused by missing documentation that would determine whether a payment was correct or incorrect, and payments that went to the right Providers in the right amounts, but that may not have complied with some regulations or statutes. In all of those cases, if the paperwork had been correct, they wouldn’t even factor into these numbers, because the payments wouldn’t have been classified as Improper or because they wouldn’t have been issued in the first place.

It’s the remaining 20% of that 5.09% where we find people who weren’t eligible for Medicaid. But it is also where we locate the individuals who were eligible but received a service that wasn’t covered.

So, while all of these 5.09% of Improper Payments count as Monetary Loss, they do not constitute Fraud. All of the Fraud falls into the minuscule 1.02% of the Total Payments.

Yes, we should be combating Fraud, but it’s not the Beneficiaries of Medicaid and Medicare who are the criminals, guilty of committing the vast majority of Fraud; it’s Ambulance Services, Pharmacies, Nursing Homes, and other Providers who have utilized creative bookkeeping and manipulation of the system. The victims are the Beneficiaries, Legitimate Providers, and Taxpayers alike.

Fighting Fraud doesn’t involve cutting funding for Medicaid, and it won’t have any impact on the rate of Improper Payments, because the Beneficiaries were never the primary Source of them.

What I hate more than anything is that this is ultimately yet another dog whistle for anti-immigration proponents. I’m not going to use Undocumented as a descriptor here, because we’ve all heard the plan, shared far and wide wherever cameras are rolling, that the Trump Administration intends to strip Documented Status from Immigrants, including those who are Citizens. It was never about doing it the right way; it was about being the right ethnic makeup, which is why there was so much support from people who believe in “The Great Replacement” myth.

Across the years 2021, 2022, and 2023, Wyoming and South Carolina were the two states with the highest rates of Improper Medicaid Payments (at 20.7 and 20.5% respectively), with Delaware, Connecticut, and Idaho following close behind. As you might notice, none of these five states are among the most populated, and none of them are near the top of the list of states with the largest immigrant populations.

California, New York, New Jersey, Florida, and Nevada are the states with the largest immigrant populations, yet they all fell below a rate of 9% during those three years.

So, people need to stop pretending this is even remotely connected with our Border Policy or Immigration Statistics, because there isn’t even a Correlation to mistake for Causality.

House and Senate Republicans upheld their promise not to tamper with Medicare as far as work and age Eligibility Requirements were concerned when drafting the 2025 Congressional Budget Bill. However, Eligibility for certain Immigrant groups will be impacted, as some Non-Citizens who were previously Eligible as Permanent Residents of the U.S. for at least five consecutive years will lose coverage 18 months after the Legislation is passed.

Medicaid, however, was far from off-limits to Congressional Republicans…and where they have tampered with Medicaid and other health coverage through the ACA, it could have dramatic and widespread impacts on healthcare systems across the nation.

Medicaid is funded through a combination of Federal and State Taxes, with roughly 70% of that funding coming from the Federal Budget. States often derive a significant amount of their funding through Provider Taxes, which are taxes paid by Health Care Providers (hospitals, nursing homes, and the like). The House version of the Congressional Budget Bill would have prohibited States from creating new Provider Taxes or increasing the current percentages paid by Providers, which are capped at 6%. The Senate version, however, gradually decreases that percentage to 3.5% by 2031, but only for the 40 States (and the District of Columbia) that employed Medicaid Expansion under the Affordable Care Act, leaving exceptions in place for nursing homes and intermediate care facilities.

This will dramatically decrease the amount of matching funds paid by Federal Taxes, creating a bit of a double-whammy on States that are being penalized for adopting Medicaid Expansion.

The concern here is that States will almost certainly have to make dramatic cuts to Medicaid as a result of the lost revenue, further cutting the number of people covered or the amount paid to Providers.

Of course, there’s also the addition of out-of-pocket expenses for Medicaid enrollees, as a $35 co-pay will be required for some services (again, only in States with expanded Medicaid) for individuals with an annual income of more than $15,650 (Federal Poverty Level). The Senate did add allowances for States to charge an even greater co-pay for Emergency Room visits for Non-Emergencies. The silver lining is that the co-pay policy doesn’t apply to primary care, mental health, or substance abuse services.

Access to insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplace is about to become more challenging as well. It will also be more expensive as enhanced subsidies are scheduled to expire at the end of 2025, which could result in some costs for ACA insurance coverage increasing by an average of 75%. I don’t know how many people can afford to see their Insurance Premiums go up by 75%, but I would be irate if it were happening to me.

Hundreds of thousands of Lawfully Present Immigrants are likely to lose insurance coverage through the ACA, because additional subsidies that keep those costs down will also be expiring.

All of this is devastating at a time when hospitals and medical facilities across the country are already facing massive budget shortfalls. Part of that comes from Medicaid and Medicare payments not being sufficient to keep pace with rising operating costs. Those skyrocketing operating costs are partially derived from administrative expenses produced by Insurance Companies, due to prior authorizations and the appeals associated with denials.

According to a report from the American Hospital Association last September, administrative costs alone accounted for more than 40% of the average hospital’s total expenses. Not only does the Commercial Insurance Industry delay and often deny necessary care for patients, but it also dramatically increases the costs for Providers to operate in the first place, which leads to increased costs for the rest of us. Of course, the Industry is thriving as a whole, with many Insurance Companies seeing record profits year after year.

You may notice some disdain for Insurance Providers, and that’s something I’m entirely conscious of. I’ve experienced frustration regarding the predatory practices of the for-profit Insurance Industry while researching their standards, profit margins, and actions.

What we’re likely to see if the House and Senate Republicans have their way, in addition to fewer people being covered by Medicaid (and health insurance in general), is staffing cuts at Providers or (in the worst case) closures. This is most likely to happen in areas where the population is lowest, impacting rural Providers more than those in urban areas…though the impacts would still be massive there as well.

Because of this, Senators added a $50 Billion fund ($10 Billion annually) to the Congressional Budget Bill, insulating rural hospitals from some of the worst impacts. The House version of the bill would have allowed rural hospitals that closed between 2014 and 2021 to reopen under the Rural Emergency Hospital designation, which allows Medicare to provide them with a potential lifeline. This could have been good, since 146 hospitals in rural counties closed between 2005 and 2023. The Senate, unfortunately, included no provision to reopen those hospitals under the retroactive designation.

So, there are some small bits of good mixed in with the bad aspects of that portion of the new budget, but none of those “good” things would be quite as necessary if it weren’t for all of the “bad” aspects of the Congressional Budget Bill. And altogether too much of that “bad” is tied up in transparent bigotry directed toward Immigrants, and the false claims that they are responsible for Fraud in the Medicaid and Medicare systems, along with the other things people often refer to as “entitlements.” Of course, while focusing on Legislation to further disenfranchise already disenfranchised people, the same Lawmakers are providing additional handouts to Corporations, the actual sources of Fraud, Waste, and Corruption.